[1591] Obsessive-compulsive disorder OCD and diet? (edited facebook thread) (January 2021)

Has anyone here ‘cured’ OCD and severe eating related anxiety/preferences using the failsafe diet? Asking for a friend’s 5 year old who is really suffering ❤️. At the moment he eats a gluten bread with propionates, dairy cheese, a gluten brioche with preservatives, orange juice. He won’t eat anything else. I think he accepted water the other day as a sub but she tried GF bread and that was not acceptable. Wouldn’t even touch it. Really tough situation - Emma

Yes. Immediately. Cut out food dyes and processed foods. Immediately a different child. Found out it also helped my migraines and lead me here and autoimmune diet. But it was hard and a lot of trial and error - Kay

My little boy displayed some strange OCD type behaviours before FS and all went away within a short time of beginning the diet - Maria

Yup. Honestly, it turned out that all of the foods I had childhood anxiety around, I'm severely reactive to - Becky

Have they looked into pans/pandas? - Elendel (Pediatric Acute-onset Neuropsychiatric Syndrome (PANS) is a clinical diagnosis given to children who have a dramatic - sometimes overnight - onset of neuropsychiatric symptoms including obsessions/compulsions or food restriction. Said to affect 1:200 children. https://www.stanfordchildrens.org/en/service/pans-pandas/what-are-pans-pandas

Yes and am finding out the hard way what happens when a 10 year old, (usually gluten free and simple failsafe) has some Tim Tam treats as a school holiday treat – Rose

I’ve found out with ‘messy monkeys’ ... a “healthy” breakfast cereal gifted to my boys for Christmas – Fi

My son had motor and vocal tics that went away with the diet changes – Cath (see Factsheet on tics and Tourette symptoms)

Anxiety/OCD could be related to something entirely different that is just manifesting itself in food issues as it is a means of ‘controlling’ something in the little ones life. A good psychologist or counsellor might be beneficial. I know if a little one who has anxiety around food cos she was told to chew her food slowly as she might choke and then the next night her brother almost did choke. So now she takes forever to eat. So, as I said, it depends on the issue at hand – Ruth